Join us Thursday evening to hear the story of Skype's growth and $8.5 billion acquisition from CEO and President, Tony Bates!

President, Skype Division

Tony Bates is president of the Skype Division at Microsoft. He is responsible for overseeing the company’s direction, strategy and overall mission to become a global communications service that will eventually reach billions of users.

Before joining Skype, Bates was senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Group. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and general manager for the Service Provider business unit, and vice president and general manager of Cisco’s high-end router business. He has also served as a member of the board of YouTube (GOOG) and LoveFilm (AMZN).

Before working at Cisco, Bates spearheaded the backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI (MCI’s national IP backbone). He has more than 20 years of experience in the Internet and telecommunications industries, and has published 12 IETF RFCs in the areas of Internet Routing and Operations. He holds nine patents in the area of Layer 2 and Layer 3 innovations.

Bates was born in the U.K. He taught himself code by reading programming manuals on the way to work and began his career as a network operator at the University of London. Bates is married with four children and in his spare time enjoys, skiing and tennis.